Update: This solution still works using Amarok 2.2 under Ubuntu 9.10
Having recently switched from Kubuntu to Ubuntu (from KDE to GNOME if you prefer), one of the first programs that I missed was Amarok!
I like keeping up to date with the latest releases, so I decided to go ahead and install Amarok 2 on my new Ubuntu 9.04 system..
Of course I started with the amarok package. You can find it or Synaptic or by Terminal:
$ sudo apt-get install amarok
I was prompted to download all the required dependencies and I did. Amarok was successfully installed, or so I thought!
I could run Amarok and I imported my music. I was then asked by the system to install a few extra packages in order to be able to play some restricted file types, like mp3. It all looked fine!
But to my disappointment, when trying to play a file I couldn’t listen to any music! I checked my system’s sound configuration and it all seemed OK. I was able to play the files on other multimedia players, listen to music on Firefox, etc.
To solve this problem, I needed to download and install two additional packages: libxine1-ffmpeg and phonon-backend-xine. Again you can find these on Synaptic, or just type in the Terminal:
$ sudo apt-get install libxine1-ffmpeg phonon-backend-xine
Now Amarok is working like a charm!
I know lots of users have complaints and demands from version 2, since version 1.4 was such a successful one. Amarok 1.4 was probably the best music player on the market. No matter what other player you compare it to, from any operating system.
I belong to that group of users too. Am hoping the developers of Amarok take user’s suggestions into consideration and implement all the neat stuff that made us love Amarok into newer releases. I believe this is already happening with the 2.1 release that was announced on June 3, 2009..
The solution is easy in ubuntu.
All the rants about any media playback can be solved by installing the “ubuntu-restricted-extras” package.
This provides mp3, video codecs, flash, windows fonts and java.
PS: this package is probably also dependent on the packages you installed manually like that.
PS2: You might be interested in amarok 2.1: http://www.kubuntu.org/news/amarok-2.1
Let me clear out that the main problem wasn’t the playback of specific files but that no sound was coming out of Amarok whatever the input file was.
With the ubuntu-restricted-extras package installed on my system, this problem still occurres.
And no, none of the above two packages is a dependency of the ubuntu-restricted-extras package.
Thnx for the comment and for the link on Amarok 2.1, you probably didn’t notice that I mentioned it at the end of the post.
=)
I had the same problem and found it to be quite annoying. I don’t know why “phonon-backend-xine” wasn’t installed automatically as a dependency, but it would have saved me ten minutes of searching for the solution.
Thanks for this short guide! I had exactly the same problem and could play mp3 with all other media players, but not Amarok.
Didn’t know how to solve it and was thinking to install Kubuntu, but I’m glad I waited!!
Thanks.
ps the design of your site is awesome
> Having recently switched from Kubuntu to Ubuntu
> (from KDE to GNOME if you prefer)
I absolutely do *not* prefer — why would you DO that to yourself??
I actually bothered to upload this post cause it took me some time to find a solution to the problem. Am happy to see that it helped!
As for the KDE vs GNOME hint, am not getting into that, I like both for what they do best!
Thanks for sharing this, it just helped me out. I too find it odd that these two packages aren’t a dependency of Amarok, considering that it wouldn’t play anything without them!
Saved my Amarok! Thanks a lot!
Thanks! it worked
Tetris4 your solution worked thanx!
thnx a lot….
thanx a lot … that is what i needed and it works awesome now….. thank you thank you thank you
It worked great. Thanks for the info.
Great post, all my music is now working in Amarok 2.1.1 under Ubuntu 9.04! I had the same problem, restricted-extras installed as well as libxine1-ffmpeg but nothing would play. Turns out it was the phonon-backend-xine I was missing. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Keep up the good work
I hate to be a debbie downer, but this didn’t change a thing for me…
libxine1-ffmpeg is already set to the newest version, is set to be manually installed
phonon-backend-xine is already the newest version.
I’m very new to anything other than windows (thank God I got out of that.) so I could easily just be missing something very simple. Any idea what it is?
@Carson
What version of Ubuntu and Amarok are you running? Are you sure you are experiencing the same problem as above? Do you have everything correctly installed?
For starters, try removing Amarok and these packages and reinstalling them, to see if the problem persists.
Worked for me thx a mill
sudo apt-get install libxine1-ffmpeg phonon-backend-xine
Hi
I have ubuntu 9.10 and the fix bellow works me too
sudo apt-get install libxine1-ffmpeg phonon-backend-xine
regards
Sava
Just found this useful post – thanks.
Just want to point out that for whatever reason, the phonon package is now installing with amarok, but the libxine1-ffmpeg is not.
Still, cutting and pasting your command checks for them both. Thanks for the post!
After installing libxine1-ffmpeg phonon-backend-xine, and it still does not work, try installing also
sudo apt-get install libxine1-plugins
Thats what got my Amarok working for me.
rgds
I tried everything listed above, but I keep getting “…*.plugins is already the newest version” but still no sound coming out of Amarok. I have Ubuntu 9.10, running in a Gnome desktop environment. I know that Amarok is KDE-friendly, but it is also supposed to run in Gnome. Thanks for any help!
@Xavier
Thnx for your addition, I hope users can benefit from it!
@Monica
You do have sound in the rest of the system right? If yes, proceed as described below. If not, then your problem is elsewhere.
I mention again the procedure in case you missed a step. I would suggest deleting everything and trying again to double-check.
1> Install Amarok 2.*
2> Install the libxine1-ffmpeg package
3> Install the phonon-backend-xine package
4> Install the libxine1-plugins package (as xavier suggested above)
If you still can’t get any sound, try doing this:
- Go to Amarok>Settings>Configure Amarok
- Select Playback tab on the left and then Configure under Sound System Configuration
- In the new window open the Backend tab and make sure Xine is selected there. If not, enable it (prefer). Check the playback after this, if you still can’t hear anything, you can try playing around with other available Backend’s if any and see what happens.
Hope this helps. Let me know how it goes!
Thanks – works great!